Studebaker Car Club Of New South Wales Inc.

26~27th March 2016

New Zealand Nationals - Cromwell.

Many thanks to Peter L & Scott R for the photo's and Peter for the report.

The organising committee of 3 with the help of many volunteers put on a great weekend over Easter for the Kiwi Nationals.

The accommodation at the Golden Gate Lodge had everybody at one venue.

The Concours on Saturday had 50 Studebakers on display.

A driving event later in the afternoon involving eating dry Wheetbix and driving skills entertained us all.

A later visit to Highland Motorsport racetrack was another option.

All these events were put onto a DVD, most of it filmed by Droneworks of New Zealand and sold after the Presentation night.
 

The Sunday run was around Central Otago firstly over the Clyde Dam which is not normally open to the public.

Next over the a single lane suspension bridge to the Historic town of Ophir where many photos of buildings and Studebakers were taken.

Finally for lunch, 200 of us arrived at the old historic gold town of Naseby and watched a local cricket game sitting around a sports ground surrounded by huge ancient pine trees.
 

Other highlights were the 3 day Lester ORegan tour from Nelson to Cromwell with 9 Studebakers and 30 plus people many brand x hire cars driven by Aussies enjoying the west coast scenry to Hokitika and Haast with stops at the glaciers and waterfalls along the way to Cromwell.

After the Nationals Tony Mckinnon our New Zealand member organised a five day tour heading south to Invercargall to see the Truck Museum and the Bert Monroe Display with the "worlds fastest Indian".

Both venues had visitors from the Cromwell Nationals all saying how good the truck and vintage car and machinery museum was.

The rest of our road trip was up the eastern side of the South Island visiting and staying at historic towns, enjoying beautiful back roads and scenery.  Dave Denton said it was the best road trip he had done.
Our group consisted of 2 Americans, 3 Queenslanders, 3 Kiwis and 6 from New South Wales.

We had 6 Studebakers, 14 people on our 900 mile return north to Motueka.

One highlight was seeing all the seal pups playing in the pool below the waterfall north of Kaikoura.
Tony had planned great accommodation stopovers and lunch stops for our tour and we arrived back safely after 10 days and 1700 miles on the road and we never got lost once.

A big "Thank You" to Tony for all the planning for the road trip.  I know he visited much of the areas first to look at accommodation and places for lunch.  With the numbers on the run increasing late and all the cars to prepare I know he would have been a very busy man!

Thank you Tony for a great tour. Peter Leyden.